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Published: 25th of January, 2025
Another release is ready, v4.9, once again packed with new features, improvements, and bug fixes. Some of the new features will make the experience of using PhotoQt noticeably better, read on for more details. In this post I will also share a little outlook of where I want to go with PhotoQt coming up to v5.0.
The most noticeable addition in this release is the improved handling of zooming. Up to v3.4 PhotoQt supported zooming to the mouse position. Due to some major refactoring as part of v4.0 this feature was removed and since then PhotoQt only supported zooming to/from the image center. With this release, PhotoQt brings back the feature of zooming to/from the mouse position, which includes the same handling for pinches on touchscreens, and (for the first time) support for pinch gestures on the touchpad.
The map explorer has received some much needed love with various fixes and improvements for how images are loaded and presented. In particular, when a large number of images are to be loaded the viewer no longer hangs shortly and/or crashes. It also received some much needed context menus offering various actions making it less of a mystery what can be done where. The center GPS location of the currently shown map is displayed in a small label at the bottom right of the map view with a context menu for copying the location to clipboard. Similarly, a right click anywhere on the map allows copying the corresponding location to clipboard.
Context menus were already mentioned above. In fact, context menus have been added to many different parts of the interface to help with understanding what a part does and offering supplementary actions (where applicable). Along with this addition, all context menus are now also handled properly, meaning they are closed on Escape and before any other action is taken. The same fix was applied to the popup from combo boxes and the edit mode for slider/spin box combinations.
The file dialog now supports permanently deleting files by holding the Shift key down. You can see the effect of pressing the Shift key in the context menu, with the trash entry changing its entry text. No matter whether you move a file to the trash or delete it permanently, PhotoQt will still always ask you for confirmation before actually doing the action. Besides this, selecting files in the file dialog also has experienced some fixes and improvement. The selection is now always properly reset when switching folders, Shift+Click always does a range-select, and there is a new option to remember file selections for each folder which will then be recalled when returning to that folder.
The Windows installer for PhotoQt has a new silent mode. If you call the installer with the /S switch, PhotoQt will install all files silently, create an entry in the start menu and register PhotoQt for the common image formats. Similarly, removing PhotoQt from the settings app in Windows does not show the uninstaller window anymore but directly uninstalls the application in the background. Since yesterday, PhotoQt is now also available in the Microsoft Store for Windows. You can install it through the Windows Store application or through command line tools like winget.
These are only the highlights, there have been a whole range of other additional fixes and improvements not listed her yet. You can find a more complete list of everything that has changed in this release in the Changelog.
PhotoQt is quickly approaching v5.0! With v5.0 I am planning on adding a new way of how PhotoQt looks and acts. In particular, I want to offer the option to either have PhotoQt look and act more or less as it does now, or alternatively integrate better into your desktop environment, generally looking and behaving more like your other applications. The former option offers more customizations and tweaks to the interface, and the latter option will make it appear more seamlessly part of your desktop experience. Since this is PhotoQt, you will always have the option of one or the other, and you can switch between them at any time.
I love to hear from people using PhotoQt. In order to get in touch with me for feedback/support/etc., there are a few different ways you can do so:
If you want to help PhotoQt, there are a few ways you can get involved:
If you are considering supporting PhotoQt by donation, please consider donating to the humanitarian relief in Ukraine instead, for example to the Ukrainian Red Cross.
Enjoy PhotoQt,
Lukas